NG+/Stygian Mode [ENG]

This solution allows you to beat NG +/ Stygian Mode without losing your sanity and breaking your stuff

I. NG+ RULES

After at most 280 hours spent in the Darkest Dungeon I believe that have some knowledge about this brilliant game. To my surprise, there are no guides on the NG + game (Polish or English versions), so I decided to focus on the subject.

For those who may not know, the Stygian mode is available after beating the game - after last update hit the ground(March 2017) I just finished the easy mode aka Radiant / Light, hard mode / hardcore / stygian has been unlocked. (But I prefer to call him the oldschool NG + habits of dark souls : )

NG + mode is basically playing from scratch into a higher level of difficulty. Enemies have about 20-30% more life and deals 20-30% more damage. Critical hits happen even from a minor enemies and the stresses rate is brutal such Bone Courtier hits 20 stress at once, to 35 in case of criticism. What is the most annoying while playing Stygian is time limit - 86 weeks and the heroes’ death limit - 12 (in practice 10, because of 2 obligatory deaths in final fight). If you cross that borderline, your safe gonna be automatically deleted and you have to start all over again. Epicly brutal isn’t it? : )

II. PREPARATIONS

The most important is your attitude towards the game! I was preparing very long time to go to NG + because my attitude was negative. I was afraid of losing and wasting several dozen hours into the game and that I will have to repeat it all over again with painful and stressful grind. This is a completely wrong and depressing approach. If you have already decided on Stygian then play it normally, more careful and more defensively and do not think about time / death limits, because in this way the game will be too stressful to go on. After surviving 5-10 dungeons, I become calm and get used to gameplay. A noticeable growth of levels difficulty can be felt in certain opponents especially in the 3rd level of the dungeon – but I will explain that later.

I beat NG + in 50 weeks - very fast (in normal mode I was used to grind for about 80-90 weeks) - with 1 (3) deaths in the account. After beating the final dungeon I had the impression "meh, it wasn’t too hard as I imagine" and "meh, overrated Stygian", so you will see changing in your attitude toward the game.

I do not plan to execute a challange runs like all-antiquarian or all-dark run :) Dark Souls fan pls back to Lordran/Drangleic/Lothric, whatever : )

III. PAINLESS STRATEGY

If you want to pass ng + with a dry foot and obtain the final achievement for completing this mode, I created a strategy too ease your pain and save you from tons of stress.
Strategy is simple - here are 10 commandments:

1. YOU SHALL ASSULT ONLY THE FIRST LOCATION - THE RUINS. There are some exceptions - eg you can easily running 1 level dungeon to Weald and Warrnes. In any case do no run into the Cove, until you want to be gangbanged by fish people (Pelagic Grouper) with their OP dmgs and bleeding. At the 2nd and 3rd dungeon level run only into the ruins. This allow you to save your sanity and prevent you from rage quits after team wiping hits that happen especially from enemies like Swine Skiver in Warrnes (3 heroes at once for 15+ dmg), Unclean Gigant in Wealds (treebranch smackdown for 50 pts), and Cove’s Crab with arterial pinch (8 pts bleed per turn) . Ruins are relatively safe. Upgrading materials rewarded after beating the dungeon are now shuffle every round and if you need a significant one, you can exchange it at the hamlet.

2. YOU SHALL NOT ENCOUNTER THE BOSSES. A major rule until you want to lose your team in brutal uneven fight. However You can slain 1st level bosses and later - see commandment 1 - only those in ruins. Of course, at 3rd dungeon level I strongly recommend to avoid fight against bosses.

3. YOU SHALL NOT ENCOUNTER EVENT BOSSES. VVULF bandit appears after 50 weeks if we have at least 1 team of 5 lvl heroes. He is OP as hell, very strong and too risky to challenge and probably one of your heroes will perish during the fight. You can send a suicide squad and retreat from the mission, but in that case - as in the darkest dungeon - one of the heroes is mandatory to die. If you skip the event, then VVulf will destroy 1 of the upgrades in Hamlet. There is a serious risk that he will destroy a high-level Blacksmith or Guild, etc. but at 50 weeks you should have everything already upgraded and a stockpile of upgrading materials. So I recommend to skip this event. The same advice applies to the Shriker, leave the damned bird alone. It’s going to steal a stashed trinkets. If you are afraid of stealing items, the simplest advice is to keep all the important trinkets in characters’ slots and sell all unneeded or just do not care about losing them. This event also does not trigger until the 50 week and as I previously mentioned I managed to beat the game at this point, so do not worry.
I also recommend to avoid encounters with collector and shambler. The collector is hard to miss, but he is by far the easiest of the random bosses. You can beat. Shambler spawns in curio altars and during dark runs so…use your torches!

4. YOU SHALL ASSAULT MEDIUM AND LONG DUNGEON IF YOU HAVE BALLS. Short dungeons only if you have no choice. The medium ones are optimal and full enough, usually there are more loot than you can carry. Hit the long dungeons if you feel confident, but without them, you'll be OK too. It is important to take a right amount of equipment, the practice taught me that it is better to take too much than lost :) So for the short dungeon you need 8 food / 8+ torches, at medium 12-16 foods, 16+ torches, and a t long runs 20-24 Food / 24 torches.

5. UP TO 25-30 WEEK YOU SHALL FOCUS AT GATHERING HEIRLOOMS OVER THE MONEY After 30 weeks you will have more heirlooms than you need. there is nothing to worry about, you won’t run out of it - unless some team of heroes has fallen. If so, there is going to be a lot of complications, but of course you can not afford losing a team at NG+ difficulty.

6.YOU SHALL UPGRADE ONLY WHAT IS NECESSARY. First the Stage Coach - it does not have to be upgraded to the max, just do the medium improvements to have a sensible group of new heroes every week. Because in NG+ heroes can no carelessly die any longer, their choice should be more thoughtful. Later, you should upgrade blacksmith and guild to improve weapons, armor and abilities. Stress-reducing buildings are unnecessary to improve unless you have some spare heirlooms. This advice it’s very important if you are the type of player like me ,who always wants to have everything at 100%l. In this playthrough you should get rid of that custom and upgrade only the most significant facilities.

7. YOU SHALL TAKE CARE OF YOUR HEROES. NG+ ‘s death limit is 10 and it does not allow you to run suicide loot gathering missions. It is the best to create a 4 teams of heroes in the first weeks ( explained later), which will correspond to 4 teams attacking 4 levels of the darkest dungeon. You will not find free cash for saving positive qualities or removing negative ones so do not bother about that mechanics of the game.

8. ANTIQARIAN SHALL BE YOURS WORKHORSE. I do not like this character because it is useless in battle, but the cash she gather form even medium dungeons rewards that battle weakness. Walk solely into the ruins and you can easily deal with 3 fighting characters and 1 money farmer. The antiquarian has a basic blight and self heal ability, so she can handle it.

9. YOU SHALL PLAY DEFENSIVLY AND DO NOT TAKE UNESSARRY RISK. It took me some time to change my thinking and attitude toward the game. In normal mode I played mainly dps team, they all have single task of doing massive damage to eliminate the enemy as quickly as possible. Due to the fact that now the opponents are doing slightly more damage, and what’s worse they have more hit poitns (mentioned unclean giants in the 3rd level wealds have 158 hit points!!!) I would advise to play defensively, to take some time to strengthen – buffy your team and weaken opponents - debuffy and develop damage over time - like bleeding and blight. However, the most important and skin saver are stun abilities. It is recommended to equip 2-3 heroes with such a skill. Main tactic is to exclude the 2 most difficult opponents and try to finish the guard. In the next turn you should try to stun those who do not have the stun resist to avoid fighting 4 opponents at once. Of course first stun hits should reach the back rows as they usually deal a lot of stress, which is more dangerous than hit points dmgs.
If your hero is going crazy, you shall retreat. Don’t be greedy. You will live to fight another day. (week)

10. YOU SHALL BE STRONG AND THINK POSITIVELY - in reference to pt. 1 of this guide. Build your own attitude that it's just a simple gameplay like any other and stop thinking about NG+ rules, permadeath and time/dead limits. FOCUS. TAKE BREAK IF YOU NEED.

IV. SQUAD SELECTION

As it was written in the 7th commandment about the heroes, you should take care and not let them succumb into madness. If some of yours heroes is on the death’s door, it is better to retreat than lost him. He will come back later to fight another day. This is especially important for experienced heroes. Do not bother about time pressure and do not allow greed to take you over, these are two main psychological factors.

And now I show your my team propositions, which I used to defeat the darkest dungeons - there are a lot of more detailed guides in this matter.

Mission 1: Vestal / Jester / Houndmaster / Crusader
Mission 2: Vestal/ Houndmaster / Man-at-arms / Man-at-arms
Mission 3: Plague doctor / Abomination / Abomination / Helion
Mission 4: Vestal / Occultist /Highwayman / Crusader – basically take what has left

As I wrote in the commandments, it is worthwhile to create final assault teams as soon as possible and get to know thier synergies. I realize that some of characters are useless in ruins such as houndmaster and jester (in terms of dealing dmgs, they are good for support and stress heal). The exceptional is use of the antiquarian, who for obvious reasons is not suitable for any of the last missions, but is workhorse in the beginning of the game and cash farmer short and medium dungeons. 1 antiqarian is enough but if you are in hurry or a very greedy person, than 2 is max. I have finished my run with 20 heroes. Only one has fallen – Jester in ruins. RIP.

As I mentioned before, it is important to play defensively and the most important skill is stun. The best line ups are 2-3 heroes stun skill. Hit the enemies’ rear ranks which are usually the ones causing the greatest stress - in the case of ruins, Madmen and Courtiers. Hence the best Ruins setup is basic default composition of the vestal / plague doctor/ highwayman / crusader.

Cash farming wise you should take antiquarian over the highwayman, but then the fight can be long-winded :)

The supreme save tank-squad is vestal/ plague doctor / crusader / crusader. One of the crusaders can be exchanged for man-at-arms.

You should play to keep last enemy alive for 1-2 turns to take time to heal offense and stress. But do not take it too long, because additional enemies will show up. Same with camping. Sometimes it is smart to camp at the end of the dungeon, so that the heroes come out flawless, untouched and ready for another mission. Hence the important role of houndmaster or jester, who, despite theirs poor effectiveness in Ruins, can stay at 3 or 4 position and be useful support and stress healers.

The characters I did not use at all: leper, grave digger , arbalest, the bounty hunter (whom I like very much in the normal way in sinergy based team with arbalest occultist and houndmaster = epic bleed dps squad and targeting damage dealers),

I could write more for a long time, but I think these basic rules will allow you to beat NG + in a stress-free manner.

Good luck!

[Tobey Mao-Guire]

Can you share your team build?

[goransen vengir edition]

yaroslav there is a more painful stygian
bloodmoon is stygian with crimson court

[Yaroslav1987]

you are welcome :) I do propose to finish the game on standard difficulty and know the mechanics. After that try some challanges

[my gf hypnotizes me]

I just got the game and have 20 hours on the medium difficulty on week 25. I realized the game had achievements for beating it within a certain amount of weeks as well as on Stygian, so I figured I'd try and get those (since it will give me the lower difficulty ones anyway). Thanks for the guide, especially the tips on only doing Ruins and the party members

[Arcana]

Great ! I'll do this... when I'll have time :p

[Yaroslav1987]

Sure, go ahead, it will be my pleasure, spread the word :) Glad to hear that helps!

[Arcana]

Hello, your guide helped me a lot during my Stygian playthrough, so first of all, a great thanks !

I havn't found a such complet guide in the french Steam community, so I'd like to ask your permission to attemped to make a translate in french. Of course I'll credite you and put a link to this page ^^ May I ?

[Chuck|Norris]

@Thats it iam dead
To be honest, in my initial playthrough i didn't bother with the arbalest and the musketeer. But here i ended up using two of them in the same roster as well as two bounty hunters (not in the same party). The Arbalest class is good for the auxillary heal. Also i never used the lepper previously but when i was doing Ashes to ashes i understood what he can do, you just have to get some acc trinkets for him to have at least +10, if you don't have them you are relegated to using purge.
I loved the gravedigger in both playthroughs for the ability to strike at all positions. This is something people find the hardest to grasp, this game is only hard because of the positions 3 and 4 in the game. Those are the assholes that fuck up your next fight and then your guy dies of a heart attack...

The author purports the antiquarian...
I hate that fucker...
Never used him, because I had the bank, the author played before the districts so you need the antiquarian for the money.

[Yaroslav1987]

@ ChuckNorris - yes, this achivement is ultimate RNG. If only you could bring affected heroes into the dungeon it would be hell lotta easier.

@Thats it iam dead - this in only my preferences and hero setup that makes me feel safe and confortable. Lepper is strong and tank, but only in first 2 positions, very vunerable for shuffling and misses often. Grave Digger is glass cannon and require some shuffling, same as jester - some ppl like shuffling, I don't. Arbalest is for a "mark target" build along with bountry hunter and occultist. - my fav "mark target" build i 2x bounty hunter + 2x occultist - epic but risky healing, crowd control and huge dmg if marked. Also team is rather fragile but they made they way through dungeon. Never tried in Darkest Dungeon though.
There are like 16 heroes? Team composition are pretty unlimited. Alywas have a vestal with you for healing. Crusader and Man at arms are pretty all around heroes.

regards

[Thats it im dead]

so on this guide u write that u dont use leper, grave digger , arbalest, the bounty hunter... so at the current game version what heroes u still dont use at all... and why?